Dan Birchall

Four months ago, we bought a used car from a friend, and started discussing the idea of getting personalized license plates.  Of course, lots of good ones were already taken, like "ATOMIC," "ALIENS" and "GEEKS" - which belongs to friends of mine. Others, like "SNIPER" (which one of us  really wanted ) were deemed "offensive" by the government. Eventually, we narrowed things down to a choice between "BRAINS" and, if I recall, "ERASED." Car 54, what is the license plate of the vehicle you've stopped? Uh... ERASED. No, really, what is it? Anyway, "BRAINS" won out, and about three months ago, I put in the application for it, along with the fee for personalized plates.  Yesterday, the letter came saying the plates were ready to be picked up, and today, in a quick 13-stop process due to one of the rear mounting screw mechanisms being entirely dysfunctional (Motor Vehicle Registration twice, mechanic tw

And the Adaptive Optics guys said, "Let there be coherent light," and there was coherent light.  And they saw that it was good, and I put my camera outside for fifteen minutes to get some star trails.

My house is in the same town as the offices of Gemini Observatory, a couple miles away.  Since Gemini involves about seven different nations, and has telescopes in two hemispheres, there's an ongoing need for meetings to make sure everything runs smoothly.  One such meeting of some board or another just took place here. Normally, these meetings go more or less unnoticed by the public.  A bunch of "famous" astronomers (famous within the field of astronomy, basically unknown to everyone else) fly in from the partner countries, discuss whatever, and then fly back out.  If they do a little sightseeing, no one notices; astronomers look remarkably like all the human tourists. This time, however, board member Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University had the good fortune to be one of three winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics, just a few weeks before the board meeting.  Plans had already been made, so Gemini jumped at the opportunity to have him give a

 For the last seven years, I've worked for state universities and national research institutions. My jobs have had their pros and cons - every job does, after all.  One definite benefit has been academic pricing on software.  $199 for Photoshop or InDesign (academic price) is certainly a lot better than the list price of $699 each.  And $399 for the Creative Suite that contains both plus Acrobat Pro and some other goodies isn't half bad, either. That said, it's hard to beat free. One of the universities I'm affiliated with recently figured out that when you have 35,000 students and several thousand faculty and staff, a lot  of those people are going to need something or other from the Creative Suite.  And if you're a software company, anybody that comes to you wanting 40,000 or so licenses is likely to get your attention. So I just downloaded Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection, and got a license key... for free.  Compare to the retail list p

This Saturday evening, I attended the annual Mauna Kea Volunteer Appreciation Dinner at Hale Pohaku (2,800 meters up Mauna Kea).  Picked up some goodies, a new hat with my name on it (and "100 Hours" since I volunteered at least 100, but less than 250, hours in the last fiscal year), and things like that. Congrats  to Josh Walawender for winning Volunteer of the Year,  to  Richard Hilliard for passing the 3,000-hour lifetime volunteering mark, and to  Cliff Livermore for passing the 4,000-hour lifetime volunteering mark!  I only have 1,500 or so lifetime hours, because I'm busy with work and family and all that.  But I'm about 25 years younger than Cliff or Richard, so I might catch up someday. :) And of course, there were group photos!  I foolishly stood next to a lamp, at the very left.

"Dark Energy" co-discoverers Saul Perlmutter (of the Supernova Cosmology Project ) and Brian Schmidt and Adam Reiss (of the High-Z Supernova Search ) win the physics Nobel. I've met Saul due to our shared involvement with UC-Berkeley, the Space Sciences Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, and the Nearby Supernova Factory collaboration.  I don't think I've met Brian.  I can't remember whether I've met Adam, but I've operated a telescope for his graduate student, Dan Scolnic. I figured sooner or later the dark energy guys would get a Nobel, but I really expected it to take a couple more years.  Not bad for a bunch of guys in their 40s or early 50s.